'7.8 


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An  Argument  for  Christian  Col¬ 
leges.  An  Address . .Boston. .1857, 
...  Society  for  the  Promotion  of 
Collegiate  &  Theological  Education 
at  the  West.  By  HENRY  B.  SMITH. 


New  York:  1857., 


AN  ARGUMENT  FOR  CHRISTIAN  COLLEGES. 


A N  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  IN  BOSTON,  MASS.,  MAY,  1857, 

IN  BEHALF  OF  THE 

focicti)  for  \\z  promotion  of  Collegiate  antr 
Cfteo logical  Ckcatioit  at  t|e  Safest; 

AND  REPEATED 

AT  THE  FOURTEENTH  ANNIVERSARY,  IN*  NEW  '-YORK  CITY, 

OCTOBER  27,  1857. 


BY 

HENRY  B.  SMITH, 

PROFESSOR  IN  THE  UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  NEW  YORK. 


NEW  YOBK : 

JOHN  F.  TROW,  PRINTER,  377  &  379  BROADWAY, 

CORNER  OF  "WHITE  STREET. 

1857. 


“  Voted — That  the  thanks  of  the  Board  be  presented  to  Professor  Henry 
B.  Smith,  D.  D.,  for  his  Address  delivered  before  the  Society  last  evening, 
and  that  a  copy  be  requested  for  publication.” 

An  extract  from  the  Minutes  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Directors  of  the 
Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Collegiate  and  Theological*  Education  at  the 
West,  at  their  Annual  Meeting,  in  Hew  York  City,  October  28,  1857. 

Kay  Palmer,  Secretary. 


AN  ARGUMENT  FOR  CHRISTIAN  COLLEGES. 


If  asked  what  nations  have  exerted  the  widest  historical  in¬ 
fluence,  every  scholar  would  reply, — the  Hebrew,  the  Greek,  and 
the  Roman.  These  three  have  been  universal  teachers.  J erusa- 
lem,  Athens  and  Rome  have  moulded  the  culture  of  the  human 
race.  From  Jerusalem  came  the  elements  of  our  faith  ;  from 
Athens  the  seeds  of  philosophy  and  the  ideal  in  art ;  while 
Roman  law,  the  Roman  language  and  Roman  municipal  institu¬ 
tions  are  at  the  root  of  a  large  part  of  modern  legislation.  Judea 
still  speaks  to  us  in  the  name  of  religion,  Athens  yet  inspires 
our  classic  culture,  while  Rome  is  the  enduring  type  of  the  state 
and  its  laws. 

And  thus  are  these  three  ancient  cities  the  abiding  symbols  of 
the  three  vital  interests  of  every  people  that  is  either  great,  or 
aspiring  after  greatness, — that  is,  of  religion,  of  civil  govern¬ 
ment,  and  of  education.  The  Church ,  the  State  and  the  School 
are  the  three  permanent  institutions  of  human  society ;  for  they 
represent  respectively  our  eternal  welfare,  our  temporal  well¬ 
being,  and  our  training  for  both  time  and  eternity.  There  is  a 
Divine  Kingdom;  there  is  a  human  society;  and  there  is  the 
education  of  the  successive  generations  for  both.  And  no  other 
institution  can  be  ranked  with  these  three, — omne  trinum  per- 
feclum:  for  the  useful  arts  help  to  build  them  up,  while  the 
aesthetic  arts  clothe  them  with  beauty.  The  Church,  the 
State  and  the  School  are  paramount  in  value,  dignity  and 
necessity. 


4 


And  the  relation  of  these  three  to  each  other  is  at  once  ap- 

i 

parent  ;  and  in  this  relation  we  may  see  the  true  position  and 
functions  of  Education.  For  education  in  its  inmost  sense  and 
scope  is  but  the  process  by  which  the  successive  generations  of 
the  race  are  trained  in,  and  by,  and  for  the  State  and  the  Church. 
Its  function  is  like  that  of  the  sap  in  the  tree.  It  carries  the 
living  and  shaping  forces  through  trunk,  branch,  twig,  leaf  and 
blossom  to  the  ripened  fruit ;  it  fits  each  new  atom  into  its  ap¬ 
pointed  place,  as  a  living  part  of  the  growing  whole.  Society 
would  die  out,  the  state  would  die  out,  religion  would  die  out,  if 
it  were  not  for  this  renovating  sap.  Education  shapes  the  grow¬ 
ing  life  of  both  State  and  Church. 

Each  nation,  too,  if  it  have  a  life  of  its  own,  has  its  own 
special  work  to  do  in  education,  in  the  way  best  befitting  its 
character  and  destiny.  As  is  its  government,  as  is  its  faith,  so 
must  be  its  education.  If  it  is  a  colony,  it  may  imitate  the 
parent  state  :  if  it  is  an  independent  people,  then  must  its 
system  of  general  culture  be  very  much  of  and  for  itself.  The 
Grecian  education  made  Greeks  :  Eome  disciplined  her  citizens 
into  Romans ;  Prussia  trains  its  children  for  a  monarch  who 
crowns  himself ;  the  Czar  of  all  the  Russias  makes,  by  educa¬ 
tion,  his  subjects  faithful  to  the  Greek  Church  and  to  himself, 
their  and  its  head  ;  the  present  French  university  system  fosters 
the  love  of  a  real  imperialism  and  a  nominal  democracy  ;  the 
institutions  of  England  are  at  work  in  making  Englishmen;  and  if 
America  be  not  a  province  but  a  commonwealth,  with  its  own 
part  to  play  in  the  van  of  future  history,  then  must  American 
education  be  such  as  to  prepare  its  youth  for  the  highest  and 
best  destiny  of  the  American  people. 

The  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Collegiate  and  Theological 
Education  at  the  West,  the  only  institution  of  the  kind  in  our 
country,  has  for  its  object  to  furnish  such  an  education  as  we 
most  need,  especially  in  our  Western  States,  where  the  demand 
so  far  outruns  the  supply.  In  pleading  in  its  behalf,  allow  me, 
so  far  as  the  limits  of  the  hour  will  permit,  to  attempt  the  eluci¬ 
dation  of  three  connected  propositions,  which  embody  the  main 
argument  for  the  high  plan  this  Society  has  in  view.  1.  That 


5 


the  very  Idea  of  Education  among  a  Christian  people  demands 
the  institution  of  Christian  Colleges  :  2.  That  the  History  of  Edu¬ 
cation  enforces  the  same  demand  :  3.  That  the  Position  and 
Necessities  of  the  American  people  make  the  demand  imperative. 

I.  Our  first  proposition  is,  That  the  very  Idea  of  Education 
among  a  Christian  people  demands  the  institution  of  Christian 
Colleges. 

What  is  Education  ? 

Man  alone,  of  all  animals,  can  he  educated  ;  and  hence  man 
alone  has  the  instinct  of  immortality.  The  end  of  a  plant  is  to 
hear  seed  after  its  kind  ;  it  can  do  no  more.  Animals  provide 
for  the  future,  hut  it  is  by  a  blind  impulse,  not  seeing  before  and 
after;  when  they  seem  to  reason,  it  is  rather  by  instinct  and 
association  than  by  logic  ;  we  know  not  that  they  have  either  a 
moral  or  rational  nature  ;  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  they  can¬ 
not  he  trained  in  letters  or  ethics.  But  man,  as  a  spiritual  being, 
can  ever  grow  in  knowledge  and  in  virtue.  He  has  the  idea  of 
a  moral  law  and  order  ;  he  knows  that  there  is  a  God  :  and  thus 
he  has  at  once  the  possibility  of  culture  and  the  aspiration  for 
immortality.  Because  he  is  moral,  he  is  not  all  mortal  ;  his 
very  immorality  gives  him  the  fear,  when  not  the  hope,  of  im¬ 
mortality.  His  destiny  is  not  to  he  estimated  by  a  calculation 
of  leverage  and  blind  forces,  hut  by  the  possibilities  of  that  which 
is  moral  and  spiritual.  He  is  not  merely  a  means  to  an  end  ; 
in  his  own  soul  the  highest  of  all  ends  can  he  realized,  since  he 
can  live  for  holiness,  and  not  for  happiness  alone  ;  since  he  can 
find  the  metes  and  bounds  of  his  own  being  only  in  glorifying 
God  and  enjoying  him  forever.  Even  Aristotle  teaches  us  “  that 
man’s  chief  good  is  an  energy  of  the  soul  with  respect  to  virtue 
and  Christian  ethics  makes  love  to  all  that  is  according  to  its 
real  value  to  be  the  supreme  law, — a  love  which  has  ultimate  re¬ 
spect  to  holiness  and  not  to  happiness.  To  fit  man  for  that  end, 
to  make  each  human  being  thus  harmonious  with  the  whole,  is 
the  paramount  object  and  problem  of  education.  Its  necessity 
springs  from  the  fact,  that  the  human  race  is  a  succession  of  gen¬ 
erations  ;  nature  prompts  to  it  by  the  instincts  of  parental  love 
and  filial  reverence  ;  society  must  care  for  it,  if  society  is  to  grow. 


6 


Society  is  bound  to  take  each  helpless  child,  and  make  him  part 
and  parcel  of  the  mighty  whole  ;  incorporate  him  into  the  State, 
through  a  knowledge  of  its  functions,  and  train  him  for  the 
Church  as  the  realm  of  redemption. 

Or,  in  other  words,  education  is  that  process  by  which  each 
mature  generation  fits  its  children  to  be  its  successors  in  the 
grand  development  of  human  life  and  destiny.  It  is  the  process 
of  transmitting  what  the  past  has  garnered  and  what  the  present 
possesses,  so  that  it  may  fertilize  and  make  the  future.  The 
soil  must  be  enriched  by  the  debris  of  the  past,  and  be  cultivated 
by  the  patient  husbandry  of  to-day,  if  it  is  to  bear  an  abundant 
harvest. 

uThe  Past  and  Future  are  the  wings, 
u  On  whose  support,  harmoniously  conjoined, 

“  Moves  the  great  spirit  of  human  knowledge.” 

4 

Each  new  human  being  is  to  be  worked  into  the  advancing  des¬ 
tiny  of  humanity,  as  the  skilful  loom  weaves  the  woof  into  the 
warp  ;  if  the  warp  be  the  lines  of  destiny,  the  woof  is  made  up 
of  the  threads  of  our  lives  ;  and  education  is  the  loom.  Educa¬ 
tion  is  the  giving  to  a  new  and  rising  generation  whatever  the 
old  has  got  of  value  and  of  power  ;  its  arts  and  art  ;  its  litera¬ 
ture  and  philosophy  ;  its  whole  culture,  and  above  all,  its  moral¬ 
ity  and  its  religion,  transmitting  these,  like  a  sacred  torch,  from 
sire  to  son.  Each  generation  is  here  both  a  creditor  and  a  debtor  ; 
a  creditor  to  the  past,  for  what  it  has  received,  a  debtor  to  the 
future  for  what  that  is  to  be  and  become  ;  it  can  square  the  ac¬ 
count  with  the  past  only  by  educating  for  the  future  ;  and  alas,  for 
that  generation  which  does  not  carry  a  larger  balance  to  its  sons 
than  it  received  from  its  fathers  ;  for  then  it  has  lived  in  vain  as 
to  its  highest  functions  and  duties.  Each  human  generation, 
because  it  is  a  living  growth,  and  not  a  dead  machine,  because 
the  law  of  growth  is  its  vital  law,  owes  to  its  youth  the  highest 
and  best  culture  it  can  possibly  confer.  It  must  educate  its 
children  for  the  State  and  the  Church,  if  it  is  to  be  honored  by 
the  State,  or  blessed  of  the  Church. 

This  matter  of  education,  then,  has  a  wide  scope.  It  begins 


7 


in  the  domestic  circle,  prompted  by  that  parental  instinct  which 
is  stronger  than  reason,  guided  by  that  maternal  love  which  is 
stronger  than  death,  which  gives  tone  to  each  word,  and  where 
every  look  teaches  unconsciously  ;  and  they  who  would  abolish 
the  family,  cut  off  the  very  roots  of  a  healthful  culture  of  the 
race.  Boys  and  girls,  too,  are  teaching  each  other  at  home  and 
abroad,  in  the  school  and  in  the  street.  The  social  circle  educates 
by  its  manners,  its  fashions,  its  discourse.  The  pulpit  is  a 
teacher  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  ;  the  lecture  diffuses  knowledge  ; 
the  morning  or  evening  journal  helps  on  this  business  of  edu¬ 
cation  so  consciously,  that  it  has  even  been  gravely  proposed 
that  we  should  cease  to  buy  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  and  take 
instead  a  daily  newspaper,  just  as  if  the  rill  would  not  dry  up 
when  the  fountains  are  neglected.  The  State,  too,  by  its  insti¬ 
tutions  of  all  grades,  from  the  public  school  to  the  university, 
is  bound  to  educate  its  children  for  itself ;  nor  can  it  exist  as  a 
permanent  power  unless  it  does  this  liberally.  Whenever  the 
general  education  of  its  youth  can  be  taken  from  the  State,  and 
engrossed  by  other  instrumentalities,  then  the  State  is  becom¬ 
ing  secondary,  and  these  other  institutions  primary  and  pre¬ 
dominant.  To  say  that  the  State  may  not,  must  not,  educate, 
and  educate  all,  is  to  say  that  the  State  is  succumbing  before 
some  other  power.  For,  that  which  educates  the  young  holds 
the  future  in  its  grasp  ;  it  has  got  the  germ,  and  how  shall  it 
not  have  the  ripened  fruit  !  And  the  Church,  too,  must  be  an 
educational,  as  well  as  a  missionary  institute,  if  the  Church  is  to 
be  perpetuated.  If  its  lively  oracles  are  to  be  handed  down  as 
a  living  blessing,  if  its  truths  are  to  make  the  future  glorious  as 
they  have  made  the  past  luminous,  if  it  is  to  redeem  mankind, 
according  to  its  mighty  promise  and  power,  this  can  only  be 
through  a  thorough  Christian  culture,  so  applied  and  enlarged 
as  to  meet  our  present  wants,  and  call  forth  all  the  hidden,  re¬ 
served  energies  of  the  faith  for  its  largest,  loftiest  triumphs. 
When  our  Saviour’s  touching  appeal,  “  Suffer  little  children  to 
come  unto  me”  is  thoroughly  applied,  then  may  his  Church 
look  forth  as  the  morning,  fair  as  the  moon,  clear  as  the  sun, 
and  terrible  as  an  army  with  banners.  Christianity  demands 


8 


intelligence  ;  faith  itself  is  a  clear  vision  ;  and  without  the  open 
eye  there  were  no  wisdom  to  the  open  heart  and  the  open  head. 

And  through  such  education,  applied  by  all  these  instrumen¬ 
talities,  what  marvels  are  wrought  !  so  great,  that  many  thought¬ 
ful  minds  have  even  said,  that  culture,  and  not  nature,  makes 
all  the  diversities  of  capacity  and  character.  This  opinion, 
though  false  to  what  is  innate,  is  a  homage  to  civilization.  A 
heathen  sage  tells  us;  that  the  difference  between  the  cultivated 
and  the  unlearned,  is  as  that  between  the  living  and  the  dead. 
Man  comes  into  being  the  most  helpless  of  animals,  and  acquires 
dominion  over  all  others  ;  he  subjugates  and  transforms  the  out¬ 
ward  world  ;  he  brings  to  the  light  of  day  the  secrets  hidden  in 
the  womb  of  nature,  extorting  them  by  the  exorcism  of  science  ; 
the  powers  of  the  earth  and  the  air  and  the  deep  are  summoned 
at  his  bidding ;  the  winds  and  the  lightning  oft  do  his  behest ; 
from  the  shapeless  marble  and  coarse  pigments  he  creates  the 
ideals  of  form  and  grace,  and  causes  the  rude  air  to  vibrate  with 
delight  in  melodies  such  as  nature  never  uttered ;  he  reconstructs 
the  fair  order  of  the  Kosmos  ;  he  maps  out  the  stars  by  name, 
foretelling  their  coming  and  their  going  ;  he  builds  cities,  and 
guides  the  destinies  of  states  ;  his  own  life  he  knows  as  a  part 
of  the  biography  of  an  undying  race  ;  he  abides  not  with  the 
limits  of  microscopic  or  of  telescopic  vision,  but  reaches  forth  to 
the  unseen  and  the  eternal,  knowing  that  immensity  is  the  real¬ 
ity  of  space,  and  that  all  time  is  embosomed  in  a  boundless 
eternity  ;  and  that  above  all  space  and  beyond  all  time,  there  is 
One  enthroned  who  alone  is  great,  alone  is  perfect ;  and  that 
the  measure  of  his  own  being  is  completed  only  in  living  for  Him, 
and  for  His  eternal  kingdom,  begun  here,  and  to  end — never, 
never  !  And  to  give  to  man  such  power  and  dominion,  to  trans¬ 
form  the  infant  of  a  day  into  the  perfected  manhood  of  the 
scholar,  the  artist,  the  statesman  and  the  Christian,  this  belongs 
to  the  instrumentality  of  education.  Compare  the  Sacm  of 
Bokhara  in  the  first  century  with  the  Englishmen  of  England 
in  the  nineteenth,  a  Hengist  and  Horsa  of  the  fifth  century 
(if  these  be  indeed  the  names  of  men,  and  not  rather  of  the 
horses  painted  on  the  invading  ensigns  of  the  hosts  that  then 


A 


9 


4 


ravaged  Britain,)  with,  a  Wycliffe,  Newton,  Bacon,  Shakespeare, 
Cromwell,  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  Arkwright — all  of  strict  Anglican 
descent  ;  the  rude  Celt  with  the  polished  Frenchman  ;  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  nomadic  Arab  with  the  bright  assemblage  in  a  Sab¬ 
bath-school,  singing  their  hymns  of  sweet  Record  ;  or  even  the 
vagrants  of  our  streets  and  lanes  with  the  intelligent,  ardent 
classes  in  the  public  schools  of  Boston,  St.  Louis,  or  New  York  ! 
What  has  wrought  this  magical  change  in  those  of  like  lineage, 
and,  it  may  well  be,  of  like  native  capacities  ;  what  but  the 
power  of  education  !  And  how  has  it  wrought  such  marvels  ? 
What  have  been  its  means  ?  The  modern,  well-appointed 
school-house,  seats,  tables,  carefully  prepared  text-books,  the 
blackboard,  and  what  have  been  called  the  two  main  implements 
of  education,  chalk  and  kindness,  have  doubtless  done  much  ; 
these  have  given  the  form  and  methods.  But  in  what  is  the 
substance  of  this  education,  the  reality  and  promise  of  this 
change  ?  It  is  in  the  character  formed  ;  the  principles  incul¬ 
cated  ;  the  preparation  of  these  children  not  only  for  action,  but 
for  right  action,  not  merely  to  live  for  themselves,  but  for  others, 
even  for  the  highest  welfare  of  society,  to  be  aids  and  helpers  in 
carrying  on  the  race  toward  its  best  end  and  issue.  And  if  the 
education  has  not  done  this,  it  has  failed  in  its  paramount  and 
vital  object. 

We  have  thus  spoken  of  education  as  a  transmitting,  and 
also  as  a  transforming  power,  for  it  is  both.  According  to  its 
true  idea,  then,  it  is  to  transmit  the  best  and  highest  culture, 
and  thus  to  transform  the  child  into  the  man  fitted  for  right 
action.  Accordingly,  all  education  must  have  two  main  ends  in 
view  as  to  each  youth  :  the  one  having  respect  to  his  individual 
development  or  culture  ;  and  the  other  having  respect  to  the 
society,  for  and  by  which  the  education  is  conducted  ;  and  these 
ends  are  correlative  and  mutually  necessary.  Education  is  in¬ 
deed  the  training  of  the  individual ;  but — for  what  P  It  is  the 
development  of  the  individual  capacities  ;  but — by  what  ?  It 
is  for  the  future  welfare  of  society,  it  is  by  all  that  is  best  and 
valuable  in  society.  Hence  all  those  theories  which  seem  to 
restrict  education  to  the  bare  discipline  of  the  faculties,  just  let 


slip  the  main  inquiry,  and  test  in  a  true  theory.  Some  will 
have  it,  for  example,  that  it  is  little  matter  what  is  learned, 
provided  the  powers  of  the  mind  are  duly  exercised.  But  these 
very  powers  cannot  be  exercised  except  by  words,  by  thoughts, 
by  books,  by  principles.  Even  in  pure  logic  we  cannot  reason 
without  having  our  premises.  A  boy  cannot  remember  with¬ 
out  remembering  some  fact  or  truth.  It  is  utter  thoughtlessness 
to  pretend  that  the  discipline  of  the  powers  is  the  main  end. 
It  is  like  the  vague  theories  about  progress,  and  development, 
which  conveniently  ignore  the  simple  questions, — progress  of  what 
and  to  what? — development  in  what  and  for  what  ?  The  soul 
of  progress  is  in  that  which  is  made  to  progress  ;  the  essence  of 
education  is  in  that  by  which  and  for  which  the  education  is 
given.  The  real  issue  in  the  educational  theories  of  the  day  is 
altogether  outside  of  the  inquiry, — whether  education  is,  and  is 
to  be,  a  discipline  of  the  powers  :  that ,  no  one  can  deny  ;  but 
to  be  content  with  that  is  just  not  to  tell  us  whether  our  educa¬ 
tion  is  to  be  infidel  or  Christian. 

Before  pressing  the  question  to  this  issue,  however,  what  has 
been  already  said  may  aid  us  in  estimating  the  comparative 
value  of  what  is  sometimes  called  self-education,  in  distinction 
from  instruction  in  the  regular  schools  of  discipline.  Gibbon  has 
well  said,  “  that  every  man  who  rises  above  the  common  level  has 
received  two  educations  ;  the  first  from  his  teacher,  the  second  and 
more  important  from  himself.”  Every  man,  no  matter  what  his 
opportunities,  must  be  also  self-educated.  And  many,  to  their 
praise  be  it  spoken,  have  made  good  the  lack  of  early  advan¬ 
tages  to  their  own  honor,  and  the  benefit  of  mankind.  But  still, 
they  must  have  had  teachers  ;  no  nation,  no  person,  ever  yet 
spun  its  knowledge  out  of  its  own  bowels.  The  teacher  may  have 
been  only  a  dumb  book,  but  it  spoke  to  an  eager  eye.  Schools 
and  colleges  simply  aid,  direct,  give  the  best  facilities,  the  incita- 
menta  animi,  save  labor  and  blunders,  do  not  make  but  guide 
the  mind.  Those  who  inveigh  against  colleges,  because  they  have 
got  along  without  them,  would  simply  exalt  their  own  limitations 
into  a  standard.  The  only  possible  apology  for  a  man  who  talks 
against  classical  study  is  that  he  has  never  known  its  benefits. 


11 


Two  or  three  scholars  out  of  two  or  three  hundred  in  our  colleges 
may,  perchance,  be  over  nice  in  Greek  and  Latin  prosody  and  ac¬ 
cent  \  but,  surely,  we  have  not  yet,  as  a  people,  any  too  much  of 
that  culture,  of  that  critical  sagacity  in  using  terms  and  epi¬ 
thets,  of  that  measured  diction,  not  monotonous  but  shapely, 
which  the  study  of  the  classics  is  adapted  to  impart.  There 
may  not  be  enough  of  French  and  German,  of  physiology  and 
aesthetics  ;  but  we  have  not  yet  any  remarkable  surplus  of 
that  scholarship  which  makes  the  historian,  the  statesman,  the 
poet, the  philosopher,  and  the  divine.  Niebuhr,  in  one  of  his  letters, 
exclaims  :  “  Oh  !  how  men  would  hug  philology,  if  they  did  but 
know  that  it  was  to  revel  in  the  choicest  haunts  of  by-gone  times, 
weaving  the  warp  and  woof  of  life.” 

But  to  return  to  the  central  inquiry  as  to  the  theory  of  edu¬ 
cation,  we  say,  that  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  as  is  a 
man’s  theory  about  human  nature  and  human  destiny,  so  must 
be  his  theory  about  education,  that  is,  if  he  is  consistent.  The 
chief  conflicts  about  education,  and  the  best  education,  centre 
just  here.  In  the  transforming  process, ivliat  shall  be  transmitted  ? 
By  what  and  for  what  shall  the  discipline  be  guided  and  meas¬ 
ured  ?  Education  is  a  development ;  by  what  and  for  what  ? 
The  answer  to  this  inquiry  must  give  the  tone,  spirit  and  aim 
’  to  our  institutions  for  education. 

•  A  man,  for  example,  who  believes  that  the  highest  functions 
of  the  race,  its  real  divine  image,  are  to  be  found  in  the  subjuga¬ 
tion  of  nature,  the  propagation  of  the  kind,  and  social  well-being 
will  and  must  hold,  that  the  acme  of  education  is  to  be  found  in  the 
study  of  the  natural  sciences,  in  the  so-called  positive  philosophy 
which  denies  whatever  is  supernatural,  and  in  preparation  for  the 
useful  arts  of  .life.  All  religious  or  theological  teaching,  and  the 
higher  spiritual  philosophy,  will  not  enter  into  his  programme,  but 
be  left  outside  as  an  affair  for  the  learned  leisure  or  historical 
curiosity  of  anybody  who  has  a  fancy  that  way.  Hence  he  would 
like  to  supplant  the  Greek  language  by  conchology,  the  Latin  by 
instruction  in  farming,  and  mental  philosophy  by  anatomy.  He 
would  inculcate  temperance,  honor,  honesty  and  good-will ; 
would  have  a  text-book  on  the  rights  and  duties  of  men  in  the 


12 


State  ;  but  lie  would  like  to  exclude  religious  instruction,  particu¬ 
larly  in  all  the  specific  facts  and  doctrines  of  Christianity.  In 
morals  and  religion  he  would  have  only  that  taught  in  which 
everybody  agrees.  He  would  rather  have  young  men  study  a 
good  treatise  on  physiology  than  Butler’s  Analogy,  Story  on  the 
Constitution  than  Paley’s  Evidences,  and  Combe’s  Phrenology 
than  the  Hew  Testament.  And  in  all  this,  he  is  only  consistent 
with  his  radical  theory  about  human  nature  and  destiny. 

Another,  one  it  may  be  of  the  illuminati  of  the  transcendental 
philosophy  with  pantheistic  imaginings,  will  concede  the  need  of 
a  more  spiritual  culture,  of  some  knowledge  of  the  interior  temple 
as  well  as  of  its  five  gateways,  and  of  what  the  race  has  been 
doing  for  six  thousand  years,  as  well  as  of  our  own  doings  this 
year  ;  and  he  would  add  history,  speculation,  esthetics,  and  other 
branches,  provided  all  these  can  be  so  presented  as  to  confound 
nature  and  spirit,  divinity  and  humanity,  ethics  and  physiology. 

The  controversy  in  our  country  between  the  respective  claims 
of  the  Common  School  and  of  the  College  hinges,  in  part,  as  some 
discuss  it,  upon  the  major  controversy  between  infidelity  and 
Christianity.  There  are  many  who  would  not  only  banish  all 
religion  from  the  school  and  academy,  but  who  would  also  be  glad 
to  undermine  our  whole  collegiate  system,  because  it  is  for  the 
most  part  under  Christian  auspices.  Hot  only  is  the  Bible  to  * 
be  excluded  from  the  common  school  to  conciliate  those  who  at 
any  rate  will  hardly  send  their  children  thither ;  not  only  would 
they  have  sacred  learning  banished  from  the  high  school ;  but  in¬ 
stead  of  the  college,  they  would  have  other  institutions  in  which 
the  veriest  minimum  of  classics,  religion  and  philosophy  is  to  be 
the  maximum  in  these  branches.  Further,  to  aid  this  warfare 
against  the  colleges  they  are  said  to  be  aristocratic,  to  educate 
the  sons  of  the  rich  in  useless  accomplishments  ;  forgetting  that, 
as  a  general  rule,  while  the  rich  have  endowed,  the  poor  have  used 
these  institutions.  An  American  college  is  no  more  aristocratic 
than  the  light  is  aristocratic,  or  than  the  flower  and  fruit  of  a 
tree  are  aristocratic.  But  this  popular  complaint  has  a  deeper 
ground  than  the  fear  of  an  aristocracy.  For  most  of  our  colleges 
are  conservative  without  bigotry,  and  not  progressive  at  the  ex- 


13 


pense  of  undervaluing  all  past  example  and  wisdom  ;  they  also 
give  such  learning  in  the  higher  spheres  of  thought  as  enables  the 
student  to  detect  the  sophistry  and  shallowness  of  many  a  scheme 
for  reform  which  were  only  the  road  to  the  ruin  of  all  that  is 
venerable  in  Church  or  State  ;  and,  further,  through  God's  bless¬ 
ing  they  have  proved  themselves  able  guardians  and  nurseries  of 
the  Christian  faith,  in  opposition  to  that  materializing  or  panthe¬ 
istic  infidelity,  which  would  fain  bring  our  higher  learning  under 
its  own  influence. 

The  real  question,  in  point  of  fact,  about  our  colleges,  is  a 
simple  one  :  Shall  the  highest  institutions  in  our  land  be  the 
means  of  transmitting  the  highest  fruits  of  human  thought,  and 
the  blessed  powers  of  the  Christian  faith  P  Or,  shall  our  whole 
educational  system  be  given  over  to  those  whose  view  of  human 
destiny  is  limited  by  man's  temporal  welfare  ?  The  question  is 
not  so  much  whether  the  classics  shall  be  taught  ;  the  real  ques¬ 
tion  is,  shall  the  Christian  faith  be  handed  down  as  an  essential 
element  and  necessity  of  our  future  civilization.  And  Providence 
has  so  ordered  it,  that  in  this  country,  only  through  our  collegi¬ 
ate  institutions  can  Christianity  be  thus  transmitted  as  the 
light  and  warmth  of  our  highest  culture. 

The  very  idea  of  education,  as  a  transmitting  and  transform¬ 
ing  influence,  demands  then,  we  say,  the  institution  and  support 
of  Christian  Colleges  ;  for  thus  only  can  our  best  culture  be 
made  the  ally  of  the  Church  ;  thus  alone  can  the  Church  be 
perpetuated  as  a  part  of  our  highest  civilization. 

II.  Thus  we  are  prepared  to  consider,  more  briefly,  our  sec¬ 
ond  proposition,  which  was  :  That  the  History  of  Education, 
wherein  are  given  the  lessons  of  experience,  enforces  the  same 
demand.  The  history  of  education  has,  in  fact,  been  but  a  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  idea  of  education  :  as  is  the  idea,  so  has  been 
the  historic  law. 

Education  through  its  whole  history  has  been,  in  part,  a 
series  of  attempts  to  master  the  best  means  of  discipline  ;  but  it 
has  also  ever  had  in  view  the  main  object  of  education,  the  trans¬ 
mission  of  the  highest  culture.  Every  people  that  has  had  an 
historical  character  and  destiny  has  had  institutions  for  educa- 


14 


tion  commensurate  with  its  influence,  and  adapted  to  its  own 
needs.  Every  such  people  lias  made  its  highest  truths  and  faith 
the  very  core  of  its  instruction.  And  every  Christian  nation  has 
not  only  made  the  Christian  faith  the  crown  of  its  education, 
but  has  been  compelled  to  resort  to  colleges  and  universities  to 
strengthen  and  perpetuate  that  faith.  Such  is  the  teaching  of 
history,  as  we  will  try  to  exemplify  in  a  rapid  outline  of  the 
course  and  progress  of  education. 

Not  now  to  speak  of  the  hoary  Oriental  systems,  which  have 
had  no  abiding  influence,  because  neither  of  the  three  luminous 
ideas  of  Truth,  Goodness  or  Beauty  presided  over  their  litera¬ 
ture,  look  at  Athens,  the  teacher  of  the  nations,  itself,  as  has 
been  well  said,  “not  so  much  a  city  as  university.”*  From  this 
small  city,  planted  on  the  blue  Aegean,  went  forth  a  power 
wrhich  subdued  the  East  more  completely  than  did  the  Macedo¬ 
nian  phalanx,  making  the  Greek  tongue  the  language  of  culture 
through  Asia  Minor,  Egypt,  and  even  in  the  Imperial  City ; 
which  brought  the  whole  Roman  Empire  under  its  sway ;  which 
shaped  the  theology  of  Christian  Alexandria,'  and  which  became 
anew  a  living  influence  at  the  epoch  of  the  revival  of  letters,  and 
is  still  essential  to  liberal  learning  all  over  the  world.  What 
has  given  this  city  such  power  and  honor  ?  Not  its  geography, 
not  its  republicanism,  not  its  worship  of  the  Beautiful,  nor  yet 
its  philosophy  alone  ;  but,  more  than  these,  the  shaping  power 
of  its  education,  thoroughly  Greek,  while  all  human  ;  so  sym¬ 
metrical  that  they  called  it  music,  and  so  free  that  it  was  open  to 
all  comers  from  Scythia  or  Libya,  from  Rome  or  Syria.  The  stu¬ 
dent  in  the  age  of  Pericles  came  thither,  and  lived  in  a  beggarly 
way  in  its  narrow  streets  and  narrower  houses  ;  but  as  he  passes 
through  the  city,  his  eye  is  arrested  by  the  architecture  of  Calli¬ 
crates  and  the  symmetry  of  the  Parthenon  ;  he  enters  the  stately 
edifice,  and  is  entranced  by  the  forms  of  immortal  grace  sculp¬ 
tured  by  a  Phidias  or  Praxiteles  ;  he  may  hear  recited  the  dramas 
of  the  lofty  Sophocles,  and  the  tragical  Euripides,  or  the  histories 
of  an  Herodotus  and  a  Thucydides  ;  he  learns  the  force  of  human 

*  See  J.  H.  Newman.  The  Office  and  Work  of  the  University.  London. 
1856. 


15 


speech  in  the  flowing  eloquence  of  Isocrates  and  the  thunder  of 
Demosthenes  ;  at  the  Academy  he  may  listen  to  Plato  discours¬ 
ing  of  the  divine  archetypes,  and  in  the  Lyceum  to  Aristotle  dis¬ 
secting  the  forms  of  logic,  disclosing  the  organon  of  thought  or 
unveiling  the  secrets  of  nature.  And  thus  does  Athens  become 
to  him  the  ideal  of  intellectual  power,  fashioning  his  own  soul. 

In  Rome,  from  the  nature  of  its  government,  education  be¬ 
came  more  systematic  ;  the  state  provided  for  the  teaching  of 
the  ancient  totum  scibile ,  the  Trivium  and  Quadrivium,*  in 
schools  established  in  all  the  main  provinces  of  the  Empire  ; 
though  the  substance  of  the  learning  was  chiefly  taken  from  the 
Greeks.  In  Rome  itself  was  the  beginning  of  a  formal  system, 
to  be  completed  by  the  pupil  at  the  age  of  twenty  ;  there 
were  ten  chairs  for  Latin  grammar,  as  many  for  Greek  ;  three 
for  Latin  rhetoric,  and  five  for  Greek  ;  one  for  philosophy  and 
two  (or  four)  for  Roman  law.  The  system  of  education  culmi¬ 
nated  in  the  study  of  jurisprudence  ;  for  the  State  was  to  the 
Roman  what  Beauty  was  to  the  Greek. 

The  university  proper  had  not  yet  come  into  being.  The 
Museum  of  Alexandria,  endowed  by  the  munificence  of  the 
Ptolemies,  was  the  first  large  attempt  of  a  more  comprehensive 
scope  ;  the  impulse  being  given  by  Alexander,  the  friend  of 
Aristotle,  the  lover  of  music  and  the  arts.  This  Museum  was 
regularly  endowed  ;  it  had  large  libraries,  which,  as  Pliny  says, 
first  made  man’s  genius  into  a  republic, *j*  one  of  300,000  and 
another  of  400,000  volumes  ;  the  largest  remained,  answering  to 
the  Egyptian  motto,  “  a  hospital  for  sick  souls,”  until  the  Sara¬ 
cen  declared  it  fit  only  for  the  flames.  Here  taught  Euclid  the 

*  These  designations  were  current  through  the  Middle  Ages,  which  reck¬ 
oned  seven  subjects  as  belonging  to  the  liberal  arts  :  the  first  three,  viz :  grain- 
mar,  arithmetic,  and  geometry,  were  taught  in  the  elementary  schools,  and 
were  termed  the  Trivium,  and  were  hence  sometimes  called  the  trivial 
studies;  the  other  four,  the  Quadrivium,  comprised  music,  astionomy,  dia¬ 
lectics  and  rhetoric.  These  seven  subjects  of  education  are  desciibed  in  the 
well-known  lines : 

Gram,  loquitur,  Dial,  verba  docet,  Rlict.  verba  colorat ; 

Mus,  canit,  Arith.  numerat,  Geom.  ponderat,  Astron.  colit  astra. 

t  Qui  primus,  bibliothecam  dicando,  ingenia  hominis  rempublicam  fecit. 


16 


mathematician,  Hippocrates  the  astronomer,  Aristarchus  the 
critic.  Here,  too,  as  was  fitting,  was  the  first  great  school  of 

Christian  theology,  animated  by  the  influence  of  Hebrew  learn- 

♦ 

ing,  yet  chiefly  zealous  for  a  union  between  philosophy  and  faith; 
struggling  to  overcome  the  heathen  Gnosticism  by  a  pure  Chris¬ 
tian  insight  ;  contending  against  the  Greek  philosophy  and  Jew¬ 
ish  prejudice,  and  seeking  to  make  Christianity  paramount  in 
speculation  as  well  as  in  faith.  This  was  the  far-famed  Cate¬ 
chetical  school,  founded  by  Pantaenus,  but  made  illustrious  by 
the  adamantine  Origen,  the  living  personification  of  Oriental 
learning,  eagerness  and  speculation.  So  many  flocked  to  hear 
him  here  and  at  Cassarea,  that  he  says  he  had  hardly  time  to 
breathe.  Here  first  Christianity  conquered  in  the  realm  of 
thought  ;  here  first  philosophy  learned  to  say  that  the  cross  of 
Christ  is  the  marrow  of  wisdom.  Here  Greek  and  Roman  learn¬ 
ing  was  made  to  serve  the  Eazarene.  And  thus  was  the  first 
stadium  of  Christianity,  in  its  first  great  conflict  with  the  Greek 
and  Roman  culture,  safely  passed  through,  and  in  part  by  means 
of  a  fitting  education.  Cathedral  schools  were  also  early  formed 
for  the  training  of  priests  ;  that  of  Iona,  one  of  the  Hebrides,  on 
a  simple  model,  has  an  imperishable  fame  in  the  annals  of  Chris¬ 
tian  culture  and  zeal. 

The  second  stadium  of  Christian  history  is  also  made  illus¬ 
trious  by  its  schools,  those  founded  by  the  imperial  Charlemagne. 
This  period  of  man’s  history  was  introduced  by  the  devastations 
of  the  vast  barbarian  irruptions,  disintegrating  the  mighty  Roman 
Empire.  Hun,  Goth,  Vandal  and  Lombard  passed,  like  a  flood, 
from  Asia  over  Europe,  as  if  the  very  fountains  of  the  race  had 
been  opened  afresh,  a  human  deluge,  in  which  only  the  Roman 
bishop  stood  erect.  Pagan  Rome  was  whelmed.  What  power 
can  shape  this  moral  chaos  into  a  moral  kosmos  P  Charlemagne, 
in  union  with  the  Pope  who  crowned  him,  established  through¬ 
out  the  new  Western  Empire  schools  of  Christian  learning  on  a 
wider  scale  than  had  hitherto  been  attempted.  The  Englishman, 
Alcuin,  a  disciple  of  the  venerable  Bede,  was  his  counsellor.  A 
seminary  of  theology  was  made  obligatory  in  every  diocese  :  gram¬ 
mar  and  public  schools  were  inaugurated  in  each  province.  At 


17 


Paris,  Pavia  and  Bologna  were  institutions  of  a  higher  order, 
open  to  all,  for  which  in  every  land  the  best  teachers  were  sought 
out.  And  thus  was  Charlemagne  the  regenerator  of  learning  ;  and 
thus  was  Christianity  made  triumphant  over  the  barbaric  hordes. 

Charlemagne  also  meditated  the  plan  of  a  university  ;  but  the 
development  of  the  university  system  was  reserved  for  the  third 
stage  and  conflict  of  Christianity,  in  the  Mediaeval  Era.  The 
Middle  Ages  are  characterized  by  the  power  of  their  institutions, 
no  less  than  by  their  corruptions  in  the  simplicity  of  the  faith. 
The  contest  between  the  Imperial  and  Papal  powers  is  the  heart 
of  their  history  ;  and  through  the  universities  the  Papal  power, 
with  its  usual  sagacity,  held  the  cultivated  intellect.  It  was  not 
so  much  the  inherent  power  of  Peter’s  chair,  as  the  inherent 
power  of  great  educational  institutions,  which  made  the  Papacy 
so  mighty  with  the  thinkers  of  those  times.  The  leading  Univer¬ 
sity  was  that  of  Paris,  to  which  was  given  the  whole  south  bank  of 
the  Seine,  which  at  one  time  had  its  30,000  pupils,  for  whom 
it  did  not  even  provide  dormitories.  There  taught  the  brilliant 
Abelard,  that  knight-errant  of  theology,  whom  none  but  Eloise 
could  subdue  ;  there  Peter  the  Lombard  dictated  his  Sentences, 
Albertus  Magnus  his  dialectics,  and  Aquinas,  the  angelic  doctor, 
for  a  time  read  his  Gothic  system  of  theology.  Thither  came 
teachers  from  all  quarters, — thirty-two  Oxford  professors  also  read 
at  Paris ;  and  thither  followed  them  pupils  from  all  quarters. 
The  university,  says  Newman,  did  not  make  the  man  ;  the  man 
made  the  university.  There,  too,  was  the  Sorbonne,  whose 
opinions  determined  the  policy  of  states.  There,  likewise,  was  per¬ 
fected  that  union  of  Aristotelian  logic  with  ecclesiastical  tradi¬ 
tion,  which  makes  the  essence  and  strength  of  the  scholastic 
divinity. 

But  Paris  was  only  one  of  many.  Oxford  stood  next ;  at 
Salerno  medicine  was  taught ;  Bologna  in  the  thirteenth  centu¬ 
ry  had  10,000  students  of  law.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  8 
large  universities  were  founded  ;  in  the  fourteenth,  21  ;  in  the 
fifteenth,  27.  Wittenberg  came  in  1502,  a  harbinger  of  the  Be- 

formation. 

The  rude  beginnings  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  date  back  to 

2 


the  first  part  of  the  tenth  century.  These  two  universities, 
which  have  shaped  the  mind  of  England  and  helped  in  the  fashion 
of  our  own  faith  and  philosophy,  began  with  the  humblest  provi¬ 
sions.  At  Cambridge  a  common  barn  was  the  first  school  of  the 
sciences ;  but  soon,  we  are  told,  the  biggest  church  could  not 
hold  the  scholars.  Alfred’s  name  and  Oxford  are  indissolubly 
blended  ;  in  the  thirteenth  century  it  was  the  second  university 
of  Europe:  Scotch,  Irish,  Welsh,  French,  Spaniards,  Germans, 
Hungarians  and  Poles  flocked  thither  to  hear  Scotus  the  subtle. 
Bacon  the  admirable,  Hales  the  invincible,  and  Bradwardine  the 
profound.  Both  at  Cambridge  and  Oxford  the  colleges,  which 
have  almost  superseded  the  regular  university,  were  the  fruit 
chiefly  of  private  endowments.*  And  what  power  these  institu¬ 
tions  have  had  !  What  memories  are  invoked  in  their  halls  ! 
The  mind  oB  England  looks  up  to  them  with  reverence.  Their 
contests  have  been  an  epitome  of  the  contests  of  the  realm.f  With 

*  On  the  history  of  this  change,  see  Sir  William  Hamilton  on  English  Uni¬ 
versities  (Edinburgh  Review,  June,  1831,  reprinted),  in  his  Discussions  on 
Philosophy  and  Literature,  Education  and  University  Reform,  1853,  pp.  383, 
sq.  “Piety  thus  concurred  with  benevolence  in  supplying  houses  in  which 
poor  scholars  might  be  harbored  without  cost,  and  youth,  removed  from  per¬ 
ilous  temptation,  be  placed  under  the  control  of  an  overseer.”  “  Free  board 
was  soon  added  to  free  lodging;  and  a  small  bursary  or  stipend  generally 
completed  the  endowment.”  p.  400.  In  a  subsequent  article  (June,  1834), 
in  the  Discussions,  p.  458,  sq.,  he  investigates  the  original  sense  of  the  term 
university,  which  signifies,  “  not  a  school  teaching,  or  privileged  to  teach,  and 
grant  degrees,  in  all  the  faculties,”  but  the  whole  community  or  society,  united 
together  for  general  study. 

t  Oxford  in  its  early  history  was  the  centre  of  reform  in  England  ;  its  po¬ 
litical  disturbances  were  widely  felt : 

Chronica  si  penses  cum  pugnant  Oxonienses, 

Post  paucos  annos  volat  ira  per  Angligenses. 

“  A  leaven  of  something  decidedly  akin  to  Protestantism  was  at  work 
among  the  northern  clerks  and  Realists,  from  whom  Wycliffe  himself  ulti¬ 
mately  proceeded.  The  opinions  of  the  Waldenses  are  known  to  have  found 
decided  sympathy  at  Oxford.”  “  So  deeply  seated  was  this  reformatory  ten¬ 
dency  in  Oxford,  and  so  radically  intenvoven  with  the  very  principle  of  its 
existence,  that  the  final  suppression  of  the  Wycliffe  party  in  the  middle  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  gave  at  once  the  death-blow  to  its  ancient  prosperity.” 
E.  Kirkpatrick,  The  Historically  received  Conception  of  the  University,  &c. 
London,  1856. 


19 


all  their  defects,  they  have  been  the  glory  of  the  United  King¬ 
dom  ;  they  have  held  England  fast  to  the  faith  of  the  church. 

In  the  fourth  stadium  of  Christian  history,  and  in  the  fourth 
series  of  Christian  conflicts,  the  like  necessity  and  power  of  a 
thorough  Christian  education  were  deeply  felt.  The  Christian 
church  hurst  the  fetters  which  had  so  long  hound  it ;  and  it  was 
Christian  learning,  as  well  as  Christian  faith,  which  undermined 
the  Papacy,  and  became  the  bulwark  of  Protestantism.  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  were  reformed  ;  Peter  Martyr  taught  in  the 
former,  Bucer  in  the  latter  ;  Luther  and  Melancthon  were  at 
Wittenberg  ;  John  Knox  was  at  St.  Andrew’s.  Early  Christian 
and  classical  learning  were  revived,  and  proved  allies  of  the  faith. 
Seventeen  universities  were  founded  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
chiefly  under  Protestant  auspices,  and  the  great  British  schools 
of  Eton,  Rugby  and  Harrow  were  begun.  The  Dutch  universi¬ 
ties  at  Leyden  and  Utrecht  were  established^  where  Scaliger, 
Spanheim,  Yitringa,  Witsius,  Vossius,  and  Lampe  taught. 
Under  John  Calvin’s  influence  the  Academy  of  Geneva  was 
founded,  in  which  he  gave  instruction  at  times  to  1,000  pupils, 
though  never  with  the  title  of  professor  (Beza  being  the  first 
who  bore  that  name),  with  the  Turretinesas  his  successors.  In 
France  from  1578  to  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes, 
1685,  the  Protestants  established  one  or  more  colleges  in  every 
province  of  the  kingdom,  excepting  Provence,  thirty-two  in  all, 
with  a  course  of  instruction  of  seven  years  ;  and  also  at  least  one 
parochial  school  for  every  church*  The  revocation  of  the  edict 
of  Nantes  destroyed  these  dangerous  seminaries.  And  nearly  all 
these  colleges  were  the  fruit  of  the  private  zeal  and  benevolence 
of  that  noble  French  church,  now,  alas  !  so  widely  scattered. 

This  rapid  outline  of  the  history  of  institutions  for  learning, 
— not  yet  alluding  to  those  in  our  own  land,  while  it  shows  the 

*  An  interesting  account  of  the  Academy  of  Geneva  is  published  in  the 
Bulletin  de  la  Societe  de  VUistoire  du  Protestantisme  Franpais,  Quatrieme 
Annee,  1856,  by  Prof.  J.  E.  Cellerier,  from  1559  to  1798,  in  three  articles,  pp. 
13-26, 5  200-205,  253-373.  The  history  of  primary  schools  and  colleges 
among  French  Protestants  before  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes  is 
given  in  the  same  Bulletin,  by  Michel  Nicolas,  in  the  same  volume,  pp.  497- 
511,  and  582-595. 


necessity  of  education  and  of  progress  in  education,  also  proves 
the  main  positions  we  are  attempting  to  enforce,  that  Christian¬ 
ity  must  ever  be  in  the  van  of  learning,  and  that  the  form  and 
pressure  of  each  new  nation  or  era  call  for  a  new  unfolding  of  all 
the  reserved  energies  of  the  church,  adapting  the  supply  to  the 
demand. 

Four  times — so  history  tells  us — has  Christianity  passed 
through  the  struggle  of  life  or  death,  and  in  each  of  these  it 
cast  up  its  bulwarks,  towers  and  citadels,  its  institutions  of  sa¬ 
cred  learning.  Four  times,  through  God's  grace,  the  Captain  of 
our  Salvation  has  bound  anew  the  crown  of  victory  upon  the 
brow  of  his  contesting  bride.  In  the  first  ordeal  it  was  the 
struggle  with  the  Greek  culture  and  the  might  of  Pagan  Home, 
around  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  ;  and  Christian  love  and 
faith  won  the  victory,  yet  not  without  the  Christian  schools.  In 
the  second,  the  battle-field  was  the  centre  of  Europe,  and  in  the 
Carlovingian  academies  the  descendants  of  the  Goth  learned 
the  faith  of  the  Gospel.  Through  the  dark  abyss  of  the 
middle  ages  a  veiled  Providence  guided  the  faith  ;  and  from  many 
of  its  universities,  founded  to  support  imperial  and  papal  des¬ 
potism,  came  the  battle-cry  of  a  Wycliffe,  a  Huss,  a  Luther  and 
a  Knox,  calling  for  a  reform  in  the  church,  which  laid  the  basis 
for  all  other  reforms.  And  thus  was  brought  about  the  fourth 
crisis,  the  fourth  conflict,  and  in  it,  chiefly  under  the  patronage 
of  states  in  union  with  the  church,  the  present  institutions  of 
Protestant  Europe  have  made  the  Christian  faith  a  part  and 
parcel  of  the  highest  civilization  to  which  the  race  has  as  yet  at¬ 
tained.  And  now,  if  history  be  not  a  lying  oracle,  if  the  voice 
of  prophecy  utters  any  abiding  truth,  the  same  faith  is  preparing 
for  its  widest  achievement,  in  which  the  prize  is  to  be  not  one 
nation,  not  one  race,  but  the  whole  earth,  and  in  which  the 
price  is  to  be  proportioned  to  the  prize.  ‘ 

III.  And  in  this  contest  our  own  land  is  to  bear  no  inferior 
part.  That  demand,  which  comes  to  us,  as  we  have  shown,  from 
the  very  idea  of  education,  and  which  is  enforced,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  the  whole  experience  of  the  race,  is  made  imperative  by 
our  own  position  and  exigencies.  The  question  whether  Chris- 


21 


tianity  is  to  be  paramount  in  our  land,  is  the  question  at  the 
heart  of  all  our  enterprises  for  collegiate  and  theological  educa¬ 
tion,  especially  at  the  West.  Louis  Napoleon,  in  his  “Ideas,” 
says  :  “  That  the  history  of  England  proclaims  in  a  high  voice 
to  kings,  march  at  the  head  of  the  ideas  of  your  age,  and  these 
ideas  follow  and  sustain  you  ;  march  in  their  train  and  they 
drag  you  along  ;  march  against  them  and  they  overthrow  you.” 
The  history  of  the  world  may  be  condensed  in  the  same  exhor¬ 
tation  to  the  Christian  people  of  our  land.  All  our  circumstan¬ 
ces  unite  in  demanding  of  the  church  to  put  itself  in  the  van  of 
our  national  culture. 

That  education  with  us  must  be  universal,  it  needs  no  argu¬ 
ment  to  show.  The  state  must  educate  all  ;  the  church,  also, 
must  educate  directly  all  the  children  it  can  gather  in  its  schools. 
Universal  education  is  not  a  matter  of  choice  ;  it  is  a  necessity 
laid  upon  us.  The  work  began  with  the  pilgrims  ;  it  is  going  on 
all  over  the  land.  By  some  means,  under  some  auspices,  all 
will  be  educated  ;  if  not  under  moral  and  Christian  auspices, 
then  under  materializing  and  infidel.  It  is  in  the  very  instinct 
of  a  republic,  with  universal  suffrage  as  its  irreversible  law,  that 
this  should  be  so.  Where  all  are  sovereigns,  all  will  and  must 
be  trained  for  their  sovereignty,  whether  of  weal  or  woe. 

Hence  our  system  of  education  must  be  adapted  to  our  new 
condition  ;  it  cannot  be  a  mere  imitation  of  any  foreign  model. 
It  must  also  be  fitted  to  the  needs  of  a  republic,  in  which  the 
'state  is  divorced  from  the  church.  No  foreign  system  can  cope 
with  our  dangers,  nor  be  mated  with  our  advantages. 

“Keep  all  thy  native  good,  and  naturalize 
All  foreign  of  that  name;  hut  scorn  their  ill. 

Embrace  their  activeness,  not  vanities ; 

Who  follows  all  things  forfeiteth  his  will.” — Herbert. 

It  is  with  us,  in  respect  to  education,  precisely  as  in  respect  to 
the  other  coordinate  powers  of  the  church  and  the  state  \  the 
church,  even  in  the  most  traditional  communions,  cannot  here 
thrive  on  traditions  alone  ;  the  state  can  never  live  by  mere 
precedents. 


I 


00 
_  — 

And  for  our  encouragement  it  may  be  said,  that  no  people 
ever  began  its  institutions  under  better  auspices  or  with  ampler 
promise.  This  we  owe,  under  God,  to  the  pious  zeal  of  our 
Pilgrim  Fathers,  many  of  them  eminent  in  learning  as  well  as 
faith.  John  Cotton,  of  Boston,  had  been  the  Head  Lecturer 
and  Dean  of  Immanuel  College  in  Cambridge,  England.  John 
Newton,  of  Ipswich,  afterwards  of  Boston,  was  offered  a  fellow¬ 
ship  in  the  same  college.  John  Davenport,  of  New  Haven,  was 
termed  a  ce  universal  scholar.”  Thomas  Hooker,  of  Hartford, 
was  a  Fellow  of  Cambridge,  and  was  here  called  the  u  light  of 
the  Western  churches.”  Thomas  Thacher,  of  Weymouth,  com¬ 
posed  a  Hebrew  Lexicon.  Charles  Chauncey,  President  of  Har¬ 
vard,  had  been  professor  of  Greek  in  Cambridge,  England. 
Cotton  Mather  was  the  author  of  382  publications,  including  the 
Magnalia. 

Established  under  such  auspices,  it  is  no  wonder  that  all  of 
our  earlier  colleges,  and,  following  in  their  train,  most  of  the 
later,  have  been  animated  by  the  conviction,  that  institutions  of 
learning  are  needed  by  Christianity,  and  should  have  this  faith 
at  the  basis  of  all  their  instructions.  The  earliest  were  not  so 
much  colleges  as  schools  for  the  training  of  a  ministry.  The 
Pilgrims,  when  they  numbered  only  5,000  families,  founded  the 
University  of  Cambridge,  in  1636,  with  its  perennial  motto  : 
Christo  et  Ecclesim  ;  and  Cotton  Mather  says  that  this  Univer- 
rity  was  “  the  best  thing  they  ever  thought  of.”  Cotton  Mather 
himself  wrote  a  book,  “  The  Student  and  Preacher  :  Manuductio 
ad  Ministerium  ;  or,  The  Angels  preparing  to  Sound  the  Trum¬ 
pet,”  which  Dr.  Byland,  of  Northampton,  in  England,  repub¬ 
lished  in  1781,  for  its  valuable  directions.  In  1696,  there 
were  116  pastors  in  the  129  churches,  and  109  of  these  were 
from  Harvard.  Harvard  has  educated  1673  ministers  ;  351  are 
still  living.  Yale  College  dates  from  1700  ;  and  in  its  earlier 
years  the  Assembly’s  Catechism  in  Greek  was  read  by  the  Fresh¬ 
men  ;  the  Sophomores  studied  Hebrew  ;  the  Juniors,  Syriac  ; 
and  the  Seniors  both  at  Harvard  and  Yale  were  thoroughly  in¬ 
structed  in  divinity  in  the  admirable  compend  of  Wollebius. 

Yale  has  given  to  our  churches  1661  ministers  ;  of  whom 


741  are  still  living.  In  the  state  of  Connecticut,  down  to  1842, 
out  of  947  ministers,  only  33  were  not  graduates.  Princeton 
was  started  in  1741,  one  of  the  fruits  of  the  great  revival,  and  by 
the  New  Side  of  that  day.  Dartmouth,  was  a  missionary  school 
from  its  inception  in  1769  ;  and  its  catalogue  gives  the  names 
of  more  than  700  ministers,  a  quarter  part  of  all  its  graduates. 
And  almost  all  of  our  later  colleges  are  the  fruit  of  Christian 
beneficence,  and  their  foundations  have  been  laid  with  the  pray¬ 
ers  of  our  churches  ;  and  He  who  heareth  prayer  has  breathed 
upon  them  his  divine  blessing,  and  through  their  influence,  sanc¬ 
tified  our  youth  for  the  service  of  Christ  and  his  church.  They 
have  aspired  to  realize  that  ideal  of  education  which  Milton  had 
in  vision  when  he  said :  “The  end  of  learning  is  to  repair  the 
ruins  of  our  first  parents  by  regaining  to  know  God  aright,  and 
out  of  that  knowledge  to  love  him,  to  imitate  him,  to  be  like 
him,  as  we  may  the  nearest  by  possessing  our  souls  of  true  vir¬ 
tue,  which,  being  united  to  the  heavenly  grace  of  faith,  makes 
up  the  highest  perfection/' 

And  it  is  also  among  our  benefits,  that,  though  our  system 
of  education  is  less  definitely  wrought  out  in  some  of  its  parts 
than  in  the  older  countries,  yet  nowhere  is  the  spontaneous  im¬ 
pulse  to  general  culture  so  widely  diffused.  With  us  alone, 
academies,  colleges  and  universities  are  founded  by  private  bene¬ 
ficence  on  a  wide  scale.  In  1800  we  had  25  colleges  ;  now  we 
number  144 ;  in  the  last  fifteen  years  we  have  added  on  the 
average  three  colleges  a  year  to  our  total  list.  In  1800  we 
had  no  theological  seminary,  now  we  number  46 ;  and  in 
medicine  and  law  the  growth  of  schools  has  been  equally  rapid. 
The  elemental  forces  are  at  work  ;  it  needs  only  their  wise  di¬ 
rection  to  produce  an  unequalled  consummation.  We  have  not 
yet  a  complete  university — the  universitas  doctorum  et  sludio- 
sorum ;  and  we  need  fresh  impulse  in  the  highest  aesthetic  culture. 
Our  scholars  must  still  prepare  for  professorships  in  foreign  lands; 
No  American  Neander  has  yet  spent  twenty-five  years,  nor 
Gieseler  twenty-eight  upon  a  Church  History  ;  no  Mitford  here 
has  given  forty  years,  nor  Grote  thirty,  to  Greece  ;  no  American 
Wolf  has  passed  twenty-two  years  in  editing  Demosthenes, 


24 


nor  Wyttenbach  thirty-eight  on  Plutarch  ;  no  Schelling  with 
us  has  kept  a  system  of  philosophy  forty  years  in  reserve, 
perfecting  its  details  ;  and  very  few  of  our  authors  would  say 
with  Foster,  that  his  own  essay  had  5,000  faults,  and  that  he  had 
corrected  between  2  and  3,000  of  them.  We  have  no  fellowships 
for  learned  leisure  like  England  ;  nor  that  competition  in  getting 
professorships,  and  keeping  auditors,  which  is  the  life  of  a  German 
university.  Our  diamond  has  a  flaw  ;  but  still  it  is  better  than  a 
pebble  ;  and  for  no  diamond  in  a  regal  diadem  would  we  make  the 
exchange.  Better  is  this  universal  zeal  for  education  than  all  the 
patronage  of  states.  Academies  and  colleges  spring  up  as  our 
population  advances.  In  Minnesota  there  is  already  a  university 
at  St.  Anthony’s,  and  a  college  eight  miles  off  at  St.  Paul.  Our 
system  is  immature,  but  it  is  the  immaturity  of  a  giant.  The 
foundation  is  good,  and  it  is  our  own.  And  all  our  progress 
must  be  on  the  present  basis  ;  its  legitimate  growth  must  be 
adapted  to  the  character  and  needs  of  a  people,  that  is  advanc¬ 
ing  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  men  a  day,  and  a  hundred  miles 
a  year,  planting  towns  and  states  in  the  wilderness.  No  spec¬ 
tacle  so  sublime  was  ever  before  seen  in  human  history.  It  de¬ 
mands  a  new  version  of  the  art  of  education,  as  much  as  Alexan¬ 
der’s  tactics  demanded  of  the  Persians,  or  Napoleon’s  strategy  of 
the  Germans,  a  change  in  the  theory  of  campaigns.  When  we 
have  fully  mastered  the  idea  of  a  Christian  commonwealth,  grow¬ 
ing  nearly  as  rapidly  by  foreign  immigration  as  by  native  increase, 
then  we  shall  be  prepared  to  consider,  and  perhaps  to  answer 
the  question  :  What  is  the  education  we  need  ? 

For,  if  we,  as  a  people,  are  to  carry  on  the  course  of  human 
history  yet  another  stadium  toward  its  consummation  ;  if  we 
are  not  an  outlying  island  in  a  silent  sea,  but  a  continent  be¬ 
tween  two  mighty  oceans,  already  vexed  by  our  restless  ships, 
whose  tonnage  is  rapidly  advancing  to  an  equality  with  that  of  all 
other  nations;  if  we  are  in  the  very  van  of  the  advancing  hosts 
of  empire  in  that  unfaltering  march  from  East  to  W est,  follow¬ 
ing  the  apparent  motion  of  the  sun,  from  which  the  race  has 
never  swerved,  from  which  it  cannot  swerve,  if  the  kingdom  of 
redemption  is  to  become  the  glittering  girdle  of  our  apostate  earth  ; 


25 


if  we  are  receiving  all  tribes,  tongues  and  races  in  such  a  conflu¬ 
ence  as  that  of  all  rivers  to  the  ocean  ;  and  if  we  are  to  be  the 
means  of  transmitting  to  generations  yet  unborn  the  wisdom  and 
faith  that  alone  have  blessed  the  world  ;  then,  too,  according  to 
all  the  analogy  of  the  past,  must  we  have  channels  and  institutions 
adapted  to  our  unexampled  exigencies  and  commensurate  with 
our  unfolding  destiny.  We  must  have  such  wisdom  in  forming 
our  plans,  and  such  benevolence  in  their  prosecution,  as  to  prove 
ourselves  equal  to  our  task.  The  prophets  of  our  destiny  must 
not  merely  have  a  vision  as  large,  but  a  charity  as  wise  as  that  of 
Bishop  Berkely,  who  first  said,  “  Westward  the  course  of  empire 
takes  its  way/'  but  also  gave  a  farm  to  Yale  College. 

While  it  is  indeed  true,  as  a  great  statesman  has  said,  ce  that 
the  life  of  humanity  is  so  long,  and  the  lives  of  individuals  so 
short,  that  what  we  see  is  often  only  the  ebb  of  the  advancing 
wave  yet  the  wave  itself,  when  it  becomes  a  billow,  cannot  be 
mistaken  for  an  eddy  on  the  coast.  With  us  the  brook  has  in¬ 
deed  become  a  river,  and  the  river  an  ocean.  There  was  a  hand¬ 
ful  of  corn  upon  the  top  of  the  mountains,  and  the  fruit  thereof 
shakes  like  Lebanon.  Our  territory  is  nearly  double  the  extent  of 
that  of  Borne  in  its  palmiest  days.  Our  peaceful  institutions  have 
attracted  as  great  a  diversity  of  tongues  as  those  which  the  im¬ 
perial  eagle  subjugated.  Immigration  flocks  hither,  not  alone 
from  the  calculations  of  prudence,  but  also  borne  by  such  a 
providential  impulse  as  always  defies  and  enlightens  the  sagacity 
of  man  ;  and  that  same  impulse  carries  to  the  heart  of  the  conti¬ 
nent  the  largest  diversity  and  vigor.  Our  very  continent,  as  an  in¬ 
telligent  foreigner  has  said,  is  shaped  like  the  inside  of  a  bowl, 
so  that  all  runs  to  the  centre,  while  Europe  is  shaped  like  the 
outside,  so  that  all  runs  off.  And,  as  is  the  increase  of  our  popu¬ 
lation,  so  is  the  development  of  our  material  resources,  stimulat¬ 
ing  most  liberally  what  even  a  heathen  could  call  the 

“  Imperiosa  fames,  et  habendi  saeva  cupido.” — Lucax. 

Space  and  time  themselves,  those  inevitable  conditions  of  all 
finite  being,  are  contracting  under  the  influence  of  steam  and 


26 


electricity,  applied  by  human  skill  ;  but  this  same  influence  tends 
to  scatter  the  population  far  and  wide  in  distant  valleys,  moving 
them  from  the  old  moorings.  The  reverence  for  law  is  widely 
felt  and  the  rights  of  suffrage  generally  kept  inviolate  ;  but  the 
law  of  man  is  sometimes  enforced  as  if  it  were  the  higher  law, 
and  an  armed  mob  has  more  than  once  put  its  iron  heel  on  the 
neck  of  freedom.  In  the  heat  of  party  strife  there  is  often  great 
danger  that  living  right  and  lawT  expire  in  the  arms  of  the 
dead  forms  of  law.  The  rational  and  national  principles  of 
freedom  and  the  sectional  and  selfish  instincts  of  slavery  are  com¬ 
ing  to  bolder  issues.  Among  our  leading  evangelical  bodies,  a 
strong  feeling  of  essential  unity  still  prevails,  and  not  of  Christ 
is  the  word  that  would  sever  these  blessed  bonds.  But  there 
are  also  innumerable  sects,  gross  fanaticism,  puerile  spiritualists  ; 
there  is  also  the  organized  power  of  the  Boman  hierarchy,  and 
the  subtle  influence  of  a  pantheistic  infidelity, — the  one  nullifying 
and  the  other  deifying  human  rights  and  reason,  both  fed  most 
largely  by  immigration,  the  one  from  Celtic,  the  other  from  Teu¬ 
tonic  sources,  and  both  earnest  in  education. 

And  thus  the  problem  we  have  to  solve  is  one  which  no  other 
nation  has  yet  solved,  in  the  way  in  which  we  must  meet  it.  Can 
and  shall  these  conflicting  materials  be  inspired  with  one  spirit, 
even  with  the  spirit  of  Christ  ?  Shall  their  highest  culture  be 
Roman  or  Reformed  ;  be  infidel  or  Christian  ?  Shall  our  high¬ 
est  institutions  of  learning  be  also  institutions  of  Christian 
learning  P 

All  other  nations  have  answered  these  questions  mainly 
through  and  by  the  authority  and  resources  of  the  state.  We 
have  got  to  answer  them  chiefly  through  and  by  the  liberality  of 
private  Christians,  and  the  zeal  of  our  churches  in  the  cause  of 
education.  For  as  the  church  is  here  divorced  from  the  state, 
so  do  our  highest  institutions  of  learning  follow  the  same  law  in 
proportion  as  they  are  penetrated  by  the  best  evangelical  influ¬ 
ence.  Thus  the  question  reduces  itself  to  this  :  How  can  we, 
on  the  basis  of  a  general  education  given  by  our  state  govern¬ 
ments,  superadd,  in  a  voluntary  way,  the  highest  human,  philo¬ 
sophical,  scientific  and  Christian  culture  ?  In  the  past,  suchcul- 


I 


ture  lias  been  given  to  a  few  by  the  state,  while  the  same  state 
often  left  the  masses  ignorant.  With  us,  the  order  is  reversed  ; 
the  state  will  and  must  educate  the  whole  ;  but  it  cannot  be 
depended  upon,  especially  in  our  new  republics,  to  give  the  highest 
Christian  culture.  Under  God,  it  depends  upon  our  churches  to 
say,  whether  the  best  intellect  of  the  land  shall  be  on  the  side  of 
materialism  or  a  spiritual  philosophy,  of  mere  human  culture  or 
of  divine  wisdom,  of  mere  national  aggrandizement  or  of  the 
victorious  progress  of  the  kingdom  of  Immanuel.  Here  is  the 
voice  of  the  Spirit  to  our  churches, — a  voice  that  comes  from  the 
heart  and  tells  the  deepest  wants  of  our  land.  Yes,  from  the 
centre  to  the  verge  of  our  wide-spread  country,  from  the  Atlan¬ 
tic  swept  by  its  storms  to  the  shores  of  the  Peaceful  sea, 
from  the  Spanish  main  to  our  Northern  lakes ;  from  our  sons 
and  daughters  all  along  the  fruitful  banks  of  the  Western  rivers, 
bearing  the  freighted  barks  of  commerce  ;  and  above  all,  from  our 
new  states  now  laying  their  foundations  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
there  comes  up  this  voice,  this  appeal,  which  neither  our  national 
nor  state  governments,  which  no  mere  human  philanthropy  can  hear 
or  heed  ;  a  voice  which  only  the  Church  of  Christ  can  know  and 
answer.  That  we  be  saved  from  the  perils  of  a  bold  and  subtle 
infidelity,  that  we  become  not  the  victims  of  superstition,  priest¬ 
craft  and  delusion  ;  that  society  be  not  abandoned  to  rudeness  or 
given  over  to  materialism,  nor  yet  to  slavery  or  polygamy  ;  and 
that  our  new  states  may  be  established  in  the  faith  and  justice 
that  have  adorned  and  blessed  our  older  confederacies,  making 
them  the  social  wonder  of  the  world  ;  that  we  may  become  a 
truly  Christian  people  throughout  all  our  borders  ;  this  is  the 
burden  of  the  voice,  this  its  supplication  ;  for  this  it  pleads  in 
the  name  of  the  whole  land,  in  the  name  of  unborn  generations, 
in  the  name  of  humanity,  in  the  name  of  culture,  in  the  very 
name  and  spirit  of  Jesus. 

And  this  Society  commends  itself  to  our  sympathies,  our 
prayers  and  our  benevolence,  because  this  is  the  work  it  is  help¬ 
ing  on,  establishing  in  our  new  states,  under  Christian  auspices, 
such  institutions  of  learning  as  they  need  in  the  hour  of  their  for¬ 
mation,  in  the  peril  and  temptation  of  their  youth.  It  appeals 


28 


to  the  largest  Christian  intelligence  and  the  highest  human  phi¬ 
lanthropy,  for  a  work  whose  importance  will  he  felt  in  proportion 
to  our  grasp  of  the  needs  and  destiny  of  our  beloved  land.  It 
appeals  to  the  churches,  and  its  appeals  have  not  been  in  vain. 
It  asks  our  rich  men  to  build  monuments  while  they  are  still 
living,  that  they  may  rejoice  in  their  own  work.  It  asks  for 
names  to  be  named  with  that  of  John  Harvard,  who  died  at  the 
age  of  thirty,  but  who  wrote  an  inscription  more  lasting  than 
brass  ;  with  that  of  Yale,  who,  though  he  died  in  a  foreign  land, 
yet  neither  forgot  the  Hew  Haven  where  he  was  born,  nor  will 
ever  be  forgotten  by  it ;  with  that  of  Bartlett,  whose  liberal  ben¬ 
efactions  assured  the  prosperity — may  it  long  continue — of  the 
best  appointed  theological  seminary  in  our  land  ;  with  that  of 
Williston,  who  still  sees  the  annual  fruit  of  his  husbandry  in 
spiritual  things  ;  with  that  of  Peter  Cooper,  erecting,  with 
princely  munificence,  halls  dedicated  to  science  and  art  ;  with 
that  of  Lawrence,  who  knew  so  well  the  way  through  the  hand 
to  the  heart,  through  so  many  hands  to  so  many  hearts.  Chris¬ 
tian  merchants,  can  you  do  better  than  add  your  names  to  this 
list ;  can  your  money  buy  a  better  fame  P  Thus  may  you  pur¬ 
chase  for  yourselves  a  good  degree  in  the  annals  of  a  wise  Chris¬ 
tian  beneficence. 

Aid,  then,  liberally  this  noble  Society,  under  its  efficient  and 
wise  administration.  Fourteen  institutions  have  been  helped  by 
it  in  the  time  of  their  greatest  need.  Four  have  been  made  in¬ 
dependent.  Let  it  have  its  $75,000  for  the  states  east  of  the 
Mississippi,  that  it  may  confine  its  labors  to  the  Y/est,  following, 
or  rather  leading,  the  onward  march  of  the  nation.  Let  it  go  on 
doing  its  high  work  in  its  unsectarian  spirit.  Let  it  carry  learn¬ 
ing  and  the  faith,  hand  in  hand,  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska,  to 
Minnesota  and  Utah,  as  it  has  already  done  to  Oregon  and  Cali¬ 
fornia.  Let  it  bring  the  Gospel  to  bear  upon  the  ardent  intellect 
of  our  Western  youth,  gathering  in  a  rich  harvest  of  those  who 
are  to  be  laborers  in  the  harvest  of  the  Lord.  Then  shall  the 
root  of  error  become  as  rottenness,  and  its  blossom  go  up  as  the 
dust,  while  the  wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  shall  be  glad  for 


29 


them  ;  and  the  desert  shall  rejoice  and  blossom  as  the  rose.  It 
shall  blossom  abundantly  and  rejoice  even  with  joy  and  singing  ; 
the  glory  of  Lebanon  shall  be  given  unto  it,  the  excellency  of  Car¬ 
mel  and  Sharon;  they  shall  see  the  glory  of  th§  Lord,  and  the  ex¬ 
cellency  of  our  God. 


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